midnight
by ember53608
Summary: he is everything he used to be—a mess, a trickster, and a boy at heart. [pre-epilogues.]


Before you go on, I'd just like to say that in every fic I write for this fandom, I'll be ignoring the epilogues. I found them unnecessary, and they weren't really to my liking. But anyway, please enjoy, and R&amp;R!

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The summer before her senior year, Sabrina doesn't spend many a day inside a house. While she technically does stay at her grandmother's every night, by ten o'clock each morning, she's made it out the door, a satchel hanging off one shoulder and a loaded key chain jangling in her right hand.

Daphne follows her from time to time, tagging along when there isn't a boyfriend to be hung around with. The two gradually take mystery solving off of Relda's shoulders, working themselves into the profession with more ease each summer. The tomes in the bookshelf at home are never empty of ink that flies across the pages, and from time to time, Red sneaks downstairs a while after they've left to read the adventures of the day before.

This night, however, the only person downstairs is a very persistent blonde curled up at one end of the couch, scribbling fervently into her personal volume. A lamp only a few feet away glows dimly to where Sabrina can just catch the words she's written on the page. She writes in a fast hand, looping some letters together in amateur cursive while separating others with the definition of print. Altogether, it's inconsistent, but she supposes that it's things like this that make the tome hers, and no one else's.

Outside, the evergreens rattle with the sway of a late summer wind. She remembers the pixies from that first night swirling about them, the forest moving to their pulse, soft and slow. The piercing note that called them to attention echoes lightly in her ear, but she doesn't hear the sound travel.

No, not that, but something far from it-three knocks at a wooden door with a lock fashioned into every imaginable space.

Her pen stops mid-sentence, and she turns to peer at the short hallway leading to the front door. Someone murmurs two words from the other side, and the old but sound piece of work opens into the world of the Grimm family.

What Sabrina hears then she cannot believe, or rather, doesn't know how to.

"'Brina's going to be absolutely furious with you, y'know," someone says. "You send her postcards every other month, and then you forget to tell her we're coming home? I'm telling you, you won't hear the end of it."

"I'll handle it," says another, and with an immediacy that doesn't surprise her, her heart flies into her throat. Shakily, she pulls herself off of the couch and patters into view of the hallway, her flats scuffing across the floors like whispers. The ever familiar reverberation of dragonfly wings rings with every part of her body, and she holds her breath.

Jake sees her just past the fairy prince's mess of tangled hair and smiles. "Handle it, then," he retorts, leaving the two be before either can object. Puck shifts himself to face her, and she pensively takes him in, all while maintaining her twelve feet distance.

He is everything he used to be-a mess, a trickster, and a boy at heart. She sees it in his hair, she sees it in his eyes; she sees it in the way he grins at her, sheepish but nonchalant as ever.

"Hello, Grimm," he says, and here he is, not twelve feet from her, but a mere four inches. Sabrina parts her lips, stammers as confidently as possible: "Puck."

"You miss me?" he asks, and it's then that she manages to scoff. Her eyes meet his, and they stand one in front of the other, near the same height, maybe a centimeter apart. "What do you think?" she asks in return, searching for an answer in the natural upturn of his cheekbones, the curves that stick out when he laughs.

"What I think, Grimm," he answers, taking her hands and gently knocking his forehead into hers to where she cannot stare at anything but him, and, of course, those cheekbones, "is that the Queen of Sneaks has missed her Trickster King far more than she'd like to admit."

"Oh, really?"

His breath is midnight coffee mixed with cream and two sugars, and while she really should take it in one part at a time, for her, a single sigh is all it takes to breathe everything in.

Puck traces his nose across her cheek until his mouth, stretched wide in a grin, hits the lobe of her right ear; she shuts her eyes, and waits.

"Really."


End file.
